Sins of the Father
by Sharona-Snugglebunny
Summary: A girl who travels far in search of her father, a gay former drug dealer with a car, and a muscular rapist who wants to atone for his deeds. Is this a quest of good against evil, and if so, who's side are they on?
1. Prologue : Raspy

When she was young, anyone who called Raspy by her real name got treated to a good old-fashioned thump on the head, as delivered by a tearful little girl. It was easier when she was young, because she cried often and covered her eyes. Bullies targeted the child daily, because before she would cry, she made them afraid somehow. A skinny little girl, pale and clumsy with a mop of shiny black hair, who offered no resistance to the kicks because part of her felt low, part of her felt sure that she deserved it. Even when she didn't hit them, even when the other children swooped down on her like overeager carrion-eaters, she felt, deep in her heart, that she would deserve her pain and bruises and cuts until she did something about the terrible sin that was affecting her.

A weird little kid, Raspy Flannigan, but she broke it to her mum, gently, that she needed to right some wrongs. Her mother, of course, looked down at the six-year-old who still held a wad of tissue to her little nose to stem a flow of blood, and laughed nervously. That she would be dealt such a child, who avidly watched the news and bit her nails bloody when disaster struck halfway around the world, was funny and disturbing to the woman. Her mother, after all, knew what the girl's father had been like.

When she grew up, Raspy Flannigan no longer resorted to childish violence when hurt. However, anytime anyone but her mother called her Rhapsody, she set a pair of cold blue eyes on them until they squirmed and sweated. Sometimes they cussed, and once a girl burst into noisy tears that made Raspy wish she'd just slapped the silly thing in the face.

Raspy didn't have to ever meet her father to know him; he'd left when he realized she'd be a girl and not an heir. She knew that she was his spittin' image, and that she sometimes acted just like him, but she also knew that her mother gave her more than an upbringing. Her mother felt and loved and was, far more than her father ever did, and Raspy knew that she took after her mother in that respect at least. "Humanity means reality," Mary Flannigan always said. "Humanity means being worth it, and what is humanity but love and feeling? Thought separates us from animals, but love separates us from demons. We're human. We're worth it."

Raspy agreed.


	2. One : Darien

_"Stand in the place where you live, now face north. Think about direction, wonder why you haven't? Now stand in the place where you work. Now face west. Think about the place where you live, wonder why you haven't before?"_

Her voice was lovely and her face was pretty, but something about the way she sang an old song by R.E.M. made Darien Wilson uneasy. The girl- for she couldn't be older than twenty, but he'd put her closer to eighteen- was alone at a bus stop, and that should have been enough for the rapist to satisfy his appetite. Her messy black hair belonged over the face of a wild young boy, not a pretty-faced virgin with bony wrists that showed over the cuffed ends of her clean denim jacket's sleeves.

_"If you are confused, check with the sun. Carry a compass to help you along! Your feet are going to be on the ground, your head is there to move you around..."_

That she was a virgin, Darien could not doubt. Something in the way she moved, perhaps something in her voice that hadn't yet grown up. Her jacket was the same dark blue of her jeans, and both looked fairly new. And with pale skin like that, she shone in the dark like a confused beacon of light that slouched on the bench and drank in the light from the streetlamps around.

_"If wishes were trees, trees would be fallin'. Listen to reason, season is callin'..."_

Her head turned and a pair of awful eyes swivelled Darien's way, and the would-be rapist had to cover his mouth to muffle a shocked cry. They were sky blue and easily the prettiest part of her face, but her eyes told him that she thought- no, knew- she was more than him, and the blue color was so wrong, so inherently wicked, that Darien found himself avoiding it at all costs.

"Nothin'," he mumbled, before realizing that nobody had spoken for a long moment after the girl stopped singing to look at him. Then she stood, and Darien took a step back, momentarily forgetting that she was just a slip of a girl in baggy jeans and sneakers, and he was a man easily three times her size. Her eyes made him feel cold, and he felt them on him even when he looked away. After a bit, she spoke, not in the lighthearted singsong of before, but in a nearly harsh, amused tone.

"What, exactly, didja plan on doin' from those bushes, cully?" A pleasant enough question, but Darien couldn't answer. To tell the truth would expose himself, and to lie would be fatal. His mouth opened, and she took a step towards him, a small grin forming on her soft lips. "Lemme guess. Nothin' good, and nothin' you want to tell me now that I've called you on it. Am I right?"

Darien nodded mutely, and she continued.

"Gosh, but don't I hate that. Men who think they're so enormously strong and tough, but look at you! Victim-to-be shows a bit of spine and suddenly you can't even speak, much less grab me up and have your way with me. That's what you planned, wasn't it?" Her voice was low, and Darien's eyes widened. "You were going to hit me until I went limp, and drag my sorry ass through the woods... back to your crappy aluminum cabin..."

Darien felt delicate fingers touch his shoulders, but the sensation made him want to puke his guts out, sobbing. He didn't even realize that she was that close already, and it scared him to see that now he had no choice but to see her awfully blue eyes.

"Oh, boy. Dar', that's just not right. It's criminal, it's rude, and most of all, it's wrong. I'm not the first gal, either." It wasn't a question, but a statement with a hard point at the end. "You've raped before." Neither was that one a question. Darien trembled.

"You don't want to hurt anybody else, do you Dar'? Not after meeting me, you don't. You know what will happen if you ever touch another person like... that..." The large man nodded, almost frantically. "I thought you would know. You weren't always stupid..."

She paced around him, as if sizing him up, then smiled, a genuine thing. "You're going to help me. The bus isn't going to arrive for some time, now. You'll take my things and head to a good place with flat ground and no big rocks, to be safe. "We will camp out away from your cabin, though. Problem with'at, cully?"

"N-No," Darien gulped. letting her pack him like a mule or something. She patted his head, and he shuddered.

"We'll get along if you're good, Dar'," she said softly, looking at him through her soft lashes that made the act of being seen a bit easier for him. Raspy turned and squinted balefully at the bus stop as she began to move away from it, but said nothing. She had a feeling the bus wouldn't be along for a long, long time.


	3. Two : Wayne

Raspy didn't expect much of Darien's home, but while she was sharing her leftover Krispy Kremes with him, the door to the cabin banged open.

The girl knew that Darien was in some trouble if he lived in the rusted-out eyesore, but she had no other choice. If anyone dared suggest that she was afraid of the darkness and stillness outside, she would have laughed in their face, but it would have been the truth. She needed light and company, because being alone in the dark sometimes gave her bad thoughts.

So she sat on the musty, worn-down couch, avoiding wide patches of upholstery that had been replaced by crooked strips of duct tape, and gave the rapist a doughnut. Darien picked at it slowly, as if fearing poison, but Raspy wolfed her own down without a thought, licking the sugar from her lips. Darien barely managed to take his third miniscule bite before Wayne barged in, gun raised.

"Darien, you sick fu-" he began, then paused, staring at Raspy. She licked her thumb curiously at him, eyeing his expensive shoes. "Who the hell is this?" he asked stupidly.

"Raspy Flannigan," she responded promptly, cutting Darien off. "Darien's turning over a new leaf. He's not gonna help ya fence that rat poison a'yours anymore, do ya."

Taken by surprise, Wayne levelled his gun at her forehead.

Raspy raised her eyes, still smiling.

Wayne lowered his gun, sweat beading on his forehead and making his red hair stick to his skin. For a moment he felt very close to either passing out, or puking, but the moment passed. After a brief pause, he put the gun away, his hands shaking. Behind Raspy, he could see that Darien was equally shaken by... something.

"Very good, Wayne! Very good," Raspy grinned, wagging a finger at him. "Now, what do we say?"

Eyes wide, Wayne gasped out the first thing to come to mind : "My life for you..."

Raspy blinked, taken aback. "No. Don't say stupid shit like that," she said flatly, her grin fading. "Never again. I never want to hear you say that. Ya got me?"

"Sure, yeah," Wayne murmered, trying to shake off the feeling that he'd just offered his soul to the devil and the devil turned it down. "But I-"

"Stay here, cully. I'll be back, and then we'll take your car." Raspy thought for a moment, then nodded. "We're headed to Vegas." Darien sputtered at the thought, and Wayne almost reached for his gun, but thought better of it.

"Las Vegas? As in, Nevada! You crazy? That's easily a thousand miles away!" Wayne half-shouted, half-laughed. She frowned at him, and he felt his stomach fall. Cripes, he WAS going to puke... "I mean.. we're just... we can't just up and go to Vegas..."

"I have to go to Vegas," Raspy said softly. "Las Vegas, Nevada, because I know that the person I'm looking for has been there. He may not be there now, but the fact remains that I simply must go there. Since I need you to take me," she spread her hands out and shrugged, "we- all three of us- are headed to Vegas."


	4. Three : Uncle Bob 1

Childhood was not unkind to Rhapsody Flannigan, but neither did it render her a delicate porcelain doll, a thing of unearthly beauty like that cutesy blonde girl she went to school with. At best she was rather gawky and a bit of a nerd, an honor-roll student who'd been pushed ahead two grades so that she was a nine year old in sixth grade, easily the smallest kid in middle school. She hid behind a huge pair of cheesy mirrored sunglasses she'd bought for a dollar at Dollar General, which was okay because nobody saw her cry, and nobody got freaked out by her eyes, and everything was A-Oh-Kay. Girls teased her and sometimes the nastier boys beat her up, but it was starting to lessen because by their age, most of the boys in her class felt weird about hurting a girl, especially a scrawny little one who still had baby teeth.

Still, she was alone, especially during the summer, because in the summer her mom would send her away, would send her North, and Rhapsody would have to live with her grandmother for two months and people would call her Lil' Raspy-

_OoooooOOOOOOOoohh ain't you just cute? Ain't you just cute? Come here, lil' cutie, just come here and let yer Uncle Bob git a look at you! Oh, ain't you just so cute! Come here, come down here, you belong here, with us! Nobody'll make fun of you or push you down or hurt you down here, and we sure do have a lot of kids down here, cute lil' Raspy, a lot of kids and they all want you to come down and join ussssss-_

"You alright?" 

Raspy jerked awake, caught between sleep and the realization that she'd been cramped up in the front seat of Wayne's Hyundai and had a little bit of drool on her chin. She grunted a response, wiping her mouth with her sleeve. Wayne nodded, his eyes flicking back to the empty road ahead. They'd been driving for hours, and Wayne felt uneasy being so far from Boston.

"What were you dreaming about? It looked pretty upsetting," he mentioned, keeping his tone neutral. The girl had been shivering and moaning and clutching at her sides, and despite the sleeping Darien in the back, Wayne had been very close to pulling over and screaming for her to wake up. Part of him felt very panicky to see the young woman who terrified him without even trying, the young woman who somehow talked two very dangerous men into doing just as she asked without question, curled into a fetal position suffering from some sort of nightmare. Luckily, she'd come out of her slumber, and he kept driving. It felt important that he kept driving, on through the night if he had to, even though Wayne couldn't think of why.

"Just... something old. Ancient." Raspy waved a hand dismissively, but Wayne wondered for a moment if she meant literally. "Kid stuff. Nothin' worth mentioning. We in Vegas yet?" she asked, flashing him a grin. The smile relaxed him a little, and he smiled back.

"Not even close. I think we've moved over a timezone, though." Wayne heard her shift her weight a little, and felt a soft hand on his shoulder.

"Let me drive," she said softly, and he realized that he was bone-tired, anyway. "I won't be sleeping for a while."


	5. Four : River Tull Pump N' Pay

It was in a dusty little nowhere hole of a town that Raspy stopped for gas and drinks and a map. It was in a dusty little nowhere hole of a town that she pulled onto the grassless shoulder and leaned her head against the wheel of Wayne's Hyundai and wept. Memories had been stirred by her nightmare- dark relics of a childhood haunted by loneliness and fears that she could never put a name to.

Wayne was asleep, and she felt safe. She felt alone. Raspy no longer had her mirrored sunglasses- she had lost them years ago, but she remembered their comfort all the same. She cried until her head felt empty and clear, and when she was finished she straightened up and drove, headed to the nearest gas station. Darien stared at her from the backseat, his large body slumped against the seat in a relaxed position. He had been stirred awake when the car came to a stop, and the sound she made as she was crying was both heartbreaking and beautiful. He found himself wishing that she would cry again, that she would reach down and find a human emotion inside those terrifying eyes and become just a pretty girl again. He found himself wishing that whatever had caused her such pain would never again cross her mind, that she would never become so vulnerable and weak again.

"Raspy?" he tried, as she pulled up to a rusted gas pump. She glanced back at him, startled, and flashed him an uneasy smile.

"Yes, Darien?" Instead of the crawling horror he felt when he last looked into her blue eyes, Darien's heart seemed to explode inside him, stopping his breath and sending a torrent of blood to his face.

"Just... wonderin' where we're stopped," he gasped, glancing down at his shaking hands. _Oh Jeezus. Oh Jeezus Gawd. What is that? Is... is that love? Oh Jeezus..._

"Uh... the road sign back there said River Tull," she said after a moment, stifling a yawn. "You hungry or thirsty? I'm thinking I'll go in and get some drinks and snacks..."

"Sounds good to me, Rasp," Darien grinned uneasily, his face flushing._ Oh shit... Oh shit, it is...  
_  
Raspy smiled at him, and he felt like shutting his eyes, but couldn't.

"Wait here, then. Oh, and see if you can fill up the tank, willya?"

Humming, Raspy went into the tiny gas station, tossing Wayne's car keys in her hand as she peered around the dark room. A voice from behind the counter startled her, she hadn't noticed anyone in there.

"Help you?"

Raspy blinked at the older woman, who had a blank, bored expression on her scarred face and a faded nametag reading Alicia. The girl swallowed nervously, grinning shyly.

"Uh, sure. Do you have Coke?"

The woman eyed the girl, before shaking her head. "Nope. You look familiar," she added, reaching down into a small electric cooler. "We've only got two kinds of soda." She placed a six-pack of grape Fanta, in bottles that looked ten years old, on the counter, next to a six-pack that looked only slightly newer, resembling Coca-Cola in a vague sort of way. Raspy pointed at the generic-looking Coke, then glanced around and grabbed a bag of beef jerky.

"This and that soda, please. And gas," she added, sliding the woman a twenty. The woman nodded, and Raspy left with her food and soda, feeling immensely creepy as she stepped out into the baking sunlight. "Bizarro-woman," she murmered under her breath, suppressing a shiver.

She grinned at the sleepy-eyed Wayne, who was pumping gas into the car at a painfully slow rate, and handed him a bottle of soda. He took it with a grunt, peering down at the label.

"_Nozz-a-la?_ What the hell is that?"

"No idea. I guess it's generic-brand Coke," Raspy shrugged, taking an experimental sip and making a face. "Blah. It's gone all flat."


	6. Five : A Waitress

"Note to self," Raspy muttered, "never drink Nozz-a-la again." She gave Darien a grin, which he returned. "I'd rather drink Mountain Dew than let Nozz-a-la pass my lips again."

"What's wrong with Mountain Dew?" Wayne objected from the backseat.

"It tastes," Raspy replied, "exactly like carbonated cat urine. Exactly like." She grinned again, and Darien sent her a sly look.

"And you've tasted _that_, right?" he asked, and she burst into giggles.

"Yeah, I thought it was Mountain Dew until someone proved otherwise," she snickered, steering the Hyundai into the parking lot of a diner. Wayne rolled his eyes at her seemingly random bout of immaturity, but was too grateful that she'd driven most of the way to say anything. They'd passed an unhealthy-looking sign reading "Welcome to Nevada!" nearly half an hour ago, and had been searching for a place to eat ever since. The nameless diner looked positively decrepit, and Wayne said so upon stepping out of the car onto the hot pavement.

"Yeah," Raspy agreed, sighing. "I wish it was an IHOP or something, I haven't had decent pancakes in forever. Or at least a Waffle House. Something I'd recognise, that I wouldn't be mortally terrified of using the bathroom at." She yawned, shrugging at him. "The logo's a freaking dancing pig, it's probably got rats in the walls here, and the tap in the bathroom bleeds."

"And the ghosts of twelve perfectly-preserved topless dancing girls tiptoe through the tables at midnight," Wayne added, smiling a little. "And that kid from the Shining shows up and writes words on doors with his mum's lipstick."

"Cheeky little buttwipe," Darien growled, which made the other two burst into a gale of startled laughter. He followed after them, squinting his eyes to adjust them to the sudden dimness inside.

"Oh, lovely," he heard Wayne grumble, and once he could see, he realized what Wayne meant. The place was a dump.

Wayne and Darien sat in a booth next to a window, facing Raspy. She smiled at them, yawning behind her hand, and Wayne ordered a round of coffee. Once it came, he watched Raspy dump what looked like half a cup of sugar and cream into hers, his mouth twitching in amusement before he sipped at his plain black coffee and asked, "So Ras', where exactly are you from, anyway? And who the heck names their kid Raspy?"

"Nobody," Raspy muttered into her coffee. "It's Rhapsody. My mom was kinda weird and new-agey, for a Catholic."

"You're Catholic? Really?" Darien raised his eyebrows.

"Eh. Only around my ol' grandma," Raspy smiled, looking uncomfortable. "I guess I gave up on that whole organised religion thing in college, I took some philosophy classes and... yeah."

"Oh really?" Wayne asked, playing with his spoon a little. "What do your parents think about that?"

"Well, my mom's been dead for 'bout a year now," Raspy replied softly, "and I've never had the honor of meeting my ol' dad. So far, neither of them is raising any complaints."

Darien elbowed Wayne in the ribs for bringing it up, turning his eyes toward her. "Cripes, Raspy, I'm sorry. What happened?"

"Brain tumor," she said, fidgeting. "A fast one. She never had any signs of it, then it showed up and within two years, she... well... anyway," Raspy gulped down a mouthful of coffee, flagging down their waitress. "Anyway, she had a good life an' all, and she'd hate to see me get all mopey about it. We had a good life together," she repeated, smiling thinly. "Only one thing ever got left undone by that lady, and bein' that she's my mom, I'm takin' care of it for her."

"What's that?" Wayne asked, although he felt that he already knew.

"This... trip. I'm gonna give my ol' dad a stern talking-to," Raspy grinned, as the waitress, a dour brunette named Darling, came up to take their orders.

It was nearly an hour later, and afternoon had turned to evening, that the trio finally felt ready to leave. Raspy paid the bill, and Wayne took this as another opportunity to probe the girl.

"Hey, Ras', where do you get all your money from? Is it, you know, like an inheritance or something?" Raspy turned her blue eyes on him, grinning a little, but looking more surprised than anything else.

"Inheritance? Nooo. We were kinda middle-class, hun, you don't inherit a lot when you're not rich. I teach music... well, I give music lessons to kids after school. Usually rich, snotty kids." She smiled fondly, then sighed. "I primarily teach violin and piano, but I sold'em and all my other instruments to pay for this thing... heh. My cash flow is extremely finite, sorry."

Raspy glanced around suddenly, but the only other person she could see was their waitress, Darling. Darien took Raspy's elbow as they passed by the older woman.

"Raspy?" he asked, looking down at her. "Are you really lookin' for your dad out here?"

"Well," Raspy said after a pregnant moment, shrugging. "I think he's alive... so yeah. I want him to know that I've been getting along great without him around, but... I kind of want to invite him to participate in the rest of my life, too." She winced, glancing over at Darien's face. "You think that's pretty dumb, right?"

"Not at all," Darien whispered, squeezing her hand. "Not one damn bit."

Behind them, Darling, their waitress, watched the trio pile into the car and leave, a curiously grim expression on her face. None of them saw her walk into the parking lot after them, although if they had, at least one of them would have noticed that her eyes looked exactly like Raspy's for a moment.

Raspy herself didn't notice her, as she was curling up in the backseat for a quick nap. The Hyundai drove off, and perhaps it was just the glare of the headlights that bathed her face in glowing red light for a moment before darkness fell.


End file.
